Day 11 San Sebastin

It was a pleasant two and a half hour drive over to San Sebastian on the Atlantic coast. The Pyrenees go all the way to San Sebastian and although they're not as big as they are midway between coasts, they're still absolutely beautiful and interesting. The road was wide and the drive was easy and relaxing. Somehow we missed out on the lively discussions...until we got to San Sebastian.

Pintxos Bar

San Sebastian's a big town, much bigger than I envisioned. We had trouble finding our apartment, but once we did it was fine. It was a 10 minute walk to the shopping district and a 20 minute walk to Old Town and none of it was uphill. Had a bit of lunch in the shopping district then went back to the apartment to unpack. In the evening we walked back to Old Town to try out their famous tapas. I don't know what Old Town's like during the week, but on Saturday night it's crazy, everybody's out, from little kids to geezers (I know, I know). After stopping at three tapas bars I learned several things. First, boy my posts about the tapas in Jaca and Barcelona were written with zero knowledge about tapas. The stuff they call tapas in Catalan cannot be compared to the ones in Basque country. In Basque country they're called pintxos (PEEN - chohs),  and it's not unusual for a bar to have 40 or 50 different pintxos sitting on the bar. Second, I learned how to order at these bars; First you stand there in front of the pintxos bar looking stupid (not hard to do), and when the bartender says something in Spanish, just nod your head yes and he'll give you a plate. Next, fill your plate with pintxos and stand there looking stupid again and when the bartender speaks to you, just say cerveza or vino and when he gives you a beer or wine, hand him a 20 Euro note and hope you get change back. The third thing I learned is it's considered rude to leave a used napkin on the table or bar, you're suppose to throw them on the floor. I learned this from Rick Steves and verified it by noticing all the crumpled up napkins on the floor. We hit three bars and had 7 pintxos, some were okay, some were excellent and most were unbelievable. They all looked good so it's really hard to pick. The fish ones weren't so good because they got cold sitting on the bar. That was all my tapas (pintxos) lessons for the evening, my mind was exhausted and I'll probably forget by morning anyhow. I can learn this stuff all over again. Getting old is cool, always learning...over and over.